


peter losing wendy

by jadedpearl



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedpearl/pseuds/jadedpearl
Summary: Mike will later categorize the day as a series of events: Bill has a freckle that rests on the blurred line between skin and upper lip; the air smells like burnt grass, just the way Mike likes it; Bill leans forward, slow then fast, to kiss Mike, and somewhere, way off in the distance, Mike can almost just hear the gurgle of the Kenduskeag....One day in the summer of 1989 + some of the days after it.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	peter losing wendy

Bill kisses Mike once, right after his parents sell their house. 

He won’t leave for another month – and it’ll be a short September, filled with packing and the whirlwind of transferring schools, two weeks into the year – but in the here and now, it’s the middle of August and even Mike knows that this is a sort of goodbye. Not the kind he thought he’d ever receive from Bill Denbrough, but one nonetheless. 

Neither of them say anything, at first. So much of their time spent together is silent, anyway, and sitting here, amongst the long, yellowed grasses of the Barrens, spoken language feels particularly useless. In his mind, Mike will later categorize the day as a series of events; snapshots of a memory that’s too sepia toned to really remember. Bill has a freckle that rests on the blurred line between skin and upper lip; the air smells like burnt grass, just the way Mike likes it; Bill leans forward, slow then fast, to kiss Mike, and somewhere, way off in the distance, Mike can almost just hear the gurgle of the Kenduskeag. 

The kiss itself is gentle and hesitant. There’s a kick to it, too; maybe just in the chest, and not for real, but it’ll always remind Mike of a lamb anyway; soft and new, with the tendency to strike out, if only to escape. Ugly, almost, but in the way you know that it needs protecting. Mike knows it’s a confusing thing for both of them, and doesn’t dare to disrupt the moment. Too surprised to have closed his eyes, he watches as Bill pulls away and blinks a few times, squinting against the sun setting behind Mike’s shoulder. 

The funny thing is, Mike won’t even remember what they say next. His whole life, he’ll know that he’ll have the luxury and the curse of remembering it all, the way that none of the others do: when his grandfather is lowered into his grave, Mike will remember the days he would sit with him until he fell asleep; when he buys the small house in the wrong part of town, he’ll only have to look down the street to where some of his worst memories reside, in the still charred remains of what was once his parents home. But he won’t remember what they said that day. In the end, he’ll conclude it’s the normal kind of forgetting, the way he doesn’t remember the name of the farm hand who was so kind to him as a child. In the end, he’ll be okay with that. 

Bill will forget, but in the moment, it’s fresh, laid out and sleeping between them like the lamb. Bill stands, and Mike stands too, to trek down the hill back to town. In so short a time, they’ve built a secret language, a hidden and silent one. Bill runs a finger up a fern to watch it curl up into itself; he teaches Mike to skip stones, the way Beverly had taught him; a goat pushes him over and they both laugh. It’s everything and nothing, and a kiss, in the middle of all of that, is just something in the mix. Among the many things they share, it finds its home with ease, next to the way Mike places his hands on Bill’s shoulders as they tear down dirt paths on Silver. 

In a month, Mike won’t make moving day to say goodbye, because it’s fall and he won’t be able to get away from the farm. He’ll bike, as hard as he can, to Bill’s once the sun has gone down, but it’ll be too late. The house, already so empty since the fall Georgie died, will be dark, the for sale sign gone along with the bike in the yard. Mike won’t know that in that moment, Bill is sitting in the backseat of his parent’s hatchback, Derry slipping away like water into a storm drain. 

At his new school, Bill will join the literary club to fill the time and make friends. He loses his stutter, and forgets to call once, and then twice, and then forever. At first Mike will think  _ was it me _ ?  _ Was it us? _ But he knows better than to make things about him. He’s not the main character of this story, and even if he was, Beverly never called, either. Only one letter came from her, but even by the time she signed her name at the bottom it had become confusingly vague, proper nouns and specifics dropped out. It’s a wonder she knew where to send it. 

Mike will be homeschooled through high school. For a while, some part of him, small and buried, will hate his grandfather for not letting him say goodbye that day. And then at eighteen, he will die, along with any thoughts of Mike going out of state for college. He will sell the farm and move into his first apartment, a shabby duplex not far from Derry’s community college. And by that point he’ll have realized, as all of them did, that there’s something that happens when you leave. Something that he won’t let happen to him. 

It’s not about that kiss. For years, Mike will go through intermittent cycles – long stretches of leaving it alone, punctuated with brief days of wondering what it all meant. He’ll have a life, a real one, in Derry, and sometimes, he’ll be lucky enough that that summer will sink to the back of his mind. He’ll think he’s going crazy, sometimes, but it passes. His first kiss will be a classmate in school, a girl that he doesn't call; his second, a man behind the Falcon that will press his hands to Mike’s sides like Mike is Jesus on the cross, and he’s trying to keep him from bleeding out. In a way it will work, in another it will not. 

Almost before he will realize, twenty seven years will have passed and It will have started again. Mike will have known that it would; he’s been interviewing everyone around town that will listen. He will try to be ready. And when he calls Bill, and hears him stutter on the phone – for the first time in almost thirty years – he’ll allow himself to think of that day, just once more. When they meet again at the Jade of the Orient, some part of himself, humming for all of those years, will quiet when Bill is in his arms again. The trembling lamb will still, the same way Bill stills in his arms. When he hugs Mike back, they’ll both feel things quiet for a moment. 

For now though, it’s 1989. He follows Bill down the hill, watches the sun beat down on his back. He’ll fill out as an adult, but for now, he’s thin and so young, really. Just a boy. When they’re adults, the lamb will wake. For now, it sleeps. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I used to really struggle with dialogue, and now it’s like no one can ever shut up. This was kind of an exercise in that (shutting up) plus the future tense and short prose and I just really feel for mike....so there ya have it, my short little love letter to Bike. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
